In the dead of night last month, two tanker ships pulled alongside each other in the East China Sea. One was a North Korean vessel, the other was the Belize-flagged Wan Heng 11.
Lights on both ships were blazing, arousing a Japanese surveillance plane’s suspicion that they were carrying out a “ship-to-ship” transfer banned under UN sanctions imposed over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Records for the Wan Heng 11 and a number of other ships identified in recent UN and US sanctions blacklists and Japanese surveillance reports revealed ties to Hong Kong through front companies based there.
‘KEY VULNERABILITY’
The findings underscore rising concern over the southern Chinese financial capital’s role as a nexus for North Korea’s underground business network, which has prompted the US government to urge Hong Kong authorities to crack down.
The corporate registration agents that set up these front companies “present a key vulnerability in the implementation of financial sanctions,” a report by the UN Panel of Experts on North Korean sanctions released on Friday last week showed.
Researchers have said North Korea relies on front companies acting as middlemen to mask its overseas trading links, many of which involve China.
Successively tighter rounds of sanctions aim to deprive North Korea of key sources of revenue by choking off its ability to smuggle exports, including through oil transfers between ships at sea.
Hong Kong, an Asian business hub, is “staying highly vigilant about activities and suspected cases” of sanctions violations and is “looking into the cases” involving Hong Kong-registered companies, the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
‘MONACO OF THE EAST’
The territory often tops business and economic freedom rankings, based on criteria that include ease of setting up business.
That can also facilitate illicit dealings.
The territory hosts a vast industry of company formation experts who can register corporations quickly and with minimum information from their clients.
Many operate out of anonymous, one-room offices with as little as a single employee.
They promise to set up a firm within a day for clients who can apply online if they are not in Hong Kong.
Out of 11 companies based outside North Korean named in a US Department of the Treasury sanctions list last month, two each were in Taiwan and China, and one each in Singapore and Panama. The remaining five were in Hong Kong.
The UN report said that separate investigations of a Singaporean company and Glocom, identified as North Korean military equipment supplier, found evasion tactics included the use of Hong Kong front companies.
Hong Kong has imposed new rules aimed at preventing money laundering that took effect this month that require licensing of corporate registration agents.
Companies also must now identify and disclose their beneficial owners, but only to law enforcement authorities.
It is not unusual in itself for a company to operate out of secretarial office, Hong Kong corporate governance activist David Webb said.
However, lax corporate disclosure rules give “Hong Kong a sort of Monaco of the East image, as a funny place for shady people,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS